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Write a story inspired by a memory of yours.

Posted in Nonfiction on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 89 stories

The Girl with the Ocean Eyes

Submitted to Contest #140

There are people who happen to the world and people who let the world happen to them. She was the ladder. It was a cold November night, the kind of cold that made you ask the people around you if they had a jacket, but not the kind that made you think to grab your own before you left. She bought a dress the week before; loose at the knees, tight at the waist, and hugged her figure in the most flattering of ways. She'd grown up ashamed, told to cover up, told to stop being so perverse, that girls like her were simply asking for it. But she wa...

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Mary's Journey

Submitted to Contest #140

                         Mary’s Journey       by David Blackburn                                                     ...

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Anna

Submitted to Contest #140

Anna learned that every legend holds some truth. She grew up reading tales and scary stories just to try to make sense of something she couldn't really understand. She didn't believe in ghosts or in any of the spirits and monsters she read about, she was just looking for an answer.She soon would leave her hometown for college, but if she didn't clear her mind before leaving, she feared the past would haunt her.She never told anyone about the memories that lurked in her mind and, sometimes, even her dreams. She was not superstitious, but she ...

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The Blue Chair

Submitted to Contest #140

A little fabric tear, that’s all it was. Yet it changed the appearance of the chair, and it changed me. Changed how I dealt with the loss of her. Such a seemingly insignificant little thing. Many would have thought my reaction odd... extreme, perhaps. Excessively emotional. But that chair was special. For thirty-five years, I had loved it as I loved no other treasure I had ever possessed. It spoke to me with words my mother could never say... words every daughter needs to hear. It was an old cane chair. I bought it for one dollar at a seco...

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Uncle Chris

Submitted to Contest #140

It was a peculiarly cold morning for May. I was living in Zurich, miles from home. The pandemic had made it difficult to see my family back in the United States, and communication between unrelenting schedules and the eight-hour time difference was scarce. I was busy with work, spending all of my days at the Opera House, for I had pursued ballet my whole life to attain the job I had acquired. Having little time for myself or others, I became preoccupied with my own world. It was a busy season at the opera. My exhaustion made me irritable, a...

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Moments

Submitted to Contest #140

“Sit down in there!” I can still hear her voice when I look back on my adolescent years. Those words will forever ring in my ear when I think of Aunt Minnie yelling at me, my brother, and two sisters as we peeked around the corner while she prepared bowls of ice cream. We laughed hard as we tried to guess which one of us would get “the spoon” that neither of us wanted. Aunt Minnie had what was known as a sugar spoon. It was round with a tarnished gold color and looked like no other spoon we’d ever seen. I’m not sure why it tickled us so, but...

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Sushila Auntie

Submitted to Contest #140

SUSHILA AUNTY She had no relationship with our family but we called her auntie, Sushila Auntie. Our father was a dear elder brother to her. She once said to me, ‘what your father has done for me, only a true elder brother would do to his sister...he is my dear Bhai Jee.'  Sushila Auntie was a victim of India's partition and creation of Islamic Pakistan. She was from a town, known as a ‘city of wrestlers’ and famous for its food. She had built a one-room apartment in Himalayan town and named it ' Sushila Nivas'. It had on...

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Grass Stains, Ghosts, and a Missing Chicken

Submitted to Contest #140

"Come onnnnn, let's goooooo," Olivia called down the hallway. Her blonde head poked around the corner towards her brother's closed bedroom door. Without warning, David flew from his room and tore down the hallway past Olivia, through the kitchen and out the back door. Olivia squealed and ran after the boy-shaped tornado. A game! And it's only just after sunrise!  "Bye, Mum!" David called.   Standing at the kitchen sink, their mother stuck her head out the kitchen window as David and Olivia ran under the sill. Their attention fo...

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The Baseball Card

Submitted to Contest #140

Thanksgiving dinner was coming to a close. Near the kitchen sink were recently demolished plates of turkey, mash potatoes, and stringbean salad in the home of one Mary Leeton. Mary, the matriarch of two grown children and four grandchildren was getting help from the oldest of the grandkids in rinsing and shuttling her good dishware neatly into the dishwasher. Happy to have the help but even happier to spend a few quality moments with them, Mrs. Leeton is in her glory. As this transpires in the kitchen, her two adult children, Trey and Taylo...

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The Staircase

Submitted to Contest #140

It was Autumn I believe, 1971, a long time ago. Almost five decades ago as I write this story.   I had just graduated high school in Northern California, so that dreadful part of my life was now behind me. Don’t get me wrong, high school was OK, it was just not the high point of my life filled with great times and lifelong friends.  I could not wait to get out into the world. I had a fantastic job at a title company, part time during school and full time in the summers for almost 3 years at that time. ...

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Flight Of The Humans

Submitted to Contest #140

"BRRRRRRRRRRRING!" I rushed out with everyone else as soon as that bell rang out. To all of us, that was our freedom call in the afternoon. The bell told us to spend the final 45 minutes of our school day outside on the playground. The playground had been many things for all of us; it had been a castle to fend of the field dwellers which surrounded us, it had been a spaceship that we all managed to gather otherworldly materials to save the earth, and it had even been the massive bank which one group protected & others tried to rob. ...

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The Boulder

Submitted to Contest #140

The Boulder By Magdalena Brynard The sky churned from golden hues, to amber and drawing to a close in a deep crimson. A steaming mug of coffee sat beside me on the table. I was fond of watching the sun set and rise over the ridge surrounding our ranch. My fingers absentmindedly searched my face as I stared ahead; they stumbled over a small rift in the curve of my chin. A sudden flash of light engulfed my senses as my mind awoke to a smooth white field surrounding me. Ice cold spittle shot me in the face initiating a riot of sensations...

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Scarred for Life

Submitted to Contest #140

The first major upset in my life occurred when I was nine months old, although I was, of course, far too young to remember it. It was during the middle of February 1948; I caught a cold. My mother put a saucepan of milk on top of the stove and lit the gas. The liquid is heated to a pleasantly warm temperature, after which a quantity of butter is added. In those days, warm milk and butter was Glasgow’s general homeopathic medicine for any child’s nose that ran with two green streams. In winter, the two green streams would become a river notic...

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Bully Teacher, Bully Kid

Submitted to Contest #140

Bully Teacher, Bully Kid (Based on a true story) I am from Albuquerque, New Mexico and, yes, I’m Mexican American, born here but of Hispanic parents. But the story I’m about to tell you happened in a small town in California.  I was visiting my grandmother during the summer vacation from school.  It was 1989, I was 14 years old.  My grandmother lived just a block away from the local high school. During the summer, the school’s gym was kept open for the town’s teens to have something to do. There was also a small ...

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Fate and Coincidences

Submitted to Contest #140

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it only takes only one small twist of fate to change your future. But in the story, I’m about to tell you, there were countless. It started on January 1974. My name is Howard and I had just turned nineteen years old. I was six-feet one-inch tall, one-hundred-sixty-fives pounds, and being an excellent bicyclist, I had the body of an athlete. Yes, I was physically fit, but inevitably, I bore an invisible flaw. Since I could remember, I had been blind in my right eye. Years ago, the doctors determined ...

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